Wicklow’s Prof Brian is changing the world of physiotherapy
REPORTER DAVID MEDCALF MET ARKLOW NATIVE BRIAN CAULFIELD AT HIS HOME IN ENNISKERRY TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE UCD PROFESSOR’S WORK
ARKLOW native Brian Caulfield is one of the leading figures in his discipline, yet he embarked on his career with a shaky grasp of all that it meant to be a physiotherapist.
Filling out the college application form, he put his name down for physiotherapy as a teenager because he was an enthusiastic follower of sport.
Young Brian was inspired in making his choice by the way the ‘physio’ was called on to the pitch during big matches on TV whenever there was an injury to a player – that was his inspiration.
He arrived at UCD as a young student to find that most of his class was female, whic h he was not expecting. He also discovered that there was a great deal more to the job than springing into action in Croke Park or Lansdowne Road to extend the limbs of athletes who had taken knocks in the heat of battle.
Three decades later, he remains a sports fan, with a particular passion for following the exploits of the Leinster rugby team. He is still on the university campus in Belfield too, though now a member of staff and a professor of his chosen subject. And he has broadened his view of the scope and possibilities of physiotherapy far beyond the sports dugout to explore many other avenues.
He believes that people of all ages may benefit from the skills of his profession and that it offers a practical solution to many of the challenges facing an ageing population. His ground-breaking work in association with colleagues from other fields has earned him recognition from UCD. College president Andrew Deeks recently presented the Wicklow man, a resident of Enniskerry, with the NovaUCD 2017 Innovation Award.
The honour acknowledged Brian Caulfield’s work in developing ‘a connected health ecosystem in Ireland’ as the citation put it.
In other words, he has broken away from the original limits of physiotherapy to work with other disciplines for the betterment of all. Medicine is one obvious ally but he has also rallied engineering and computer science to the quest for better management of the human condition.
He admits that these days he has little or no time to spend hands-on care of patients as he concentrates on pushing out the boundaries through research.
Physiotherapy was first formalised in Scandinavia in the early 1800s, using a combination of exercise and massage to speed recovery from illness or surgery. The casualties of world wars and of the global polio epidemic gave practitioners plenty of patients to work with, enhancing their skills and evolving fresh techniques. Now as Ireland and the EU faces the prospect – at once exciting and challenging – of increased life expectancy, we may look to physiotherapists to help us make the most of the added years.
It was as far back as the mid-fifties that University College Dublin became a European leader in the field by establishing a school of physiotherapy. It was 46 years ago that Brian was born, son of Pierce and Mary Caulfield, one of a family of four who grew up at Beech Road in Arklow.
His sister Grainne still resides in Arklow, as does his brother Niall, while Colm lives in Kinnegad and he is in Enniskerry.
His love of sport was well catered for at St Kevin’s CBS as he grew up, though he never made much of an impression on the field as a Gaelic footballer. Instead he enjoyed his spell in the school athletics squad under the direction of the Brothers, contracting a love of running which has never left him.
He now thinks nothing of jogging home up the hills from his office in college to home in
Enniskerry and has been running marathons since 2004. He cuts a lean figure as he pedals his bike to or from the house discreetly built on the site of a former quarry which he shares with wife.
As an undergraduate, he spent four years studying for his primary degree and then added a master’s qualification before heading off to the United States.
He passed three formative years in Chicago looking first after patients with orthopaedic problems and arthritis or rheumatism. Then he took up a position at a gym where the customers came to for assistance after they had over-stretched themselves or otherwise picked up some niggling strain.
But his American stay proved a temporary diversion before he returned to UCD, where he was able to pursue his real passion. He was drawn to study and to what he calls the neverending journey of research: ‘I got the bug,’ he says simply. The spell in the US confirmed in his mind that he was not cut out for the job of managing back pain and rubbing sore knees.
Research was his natural environment and the university has been the natural setting in which to conduct that research. Much of his time is spent delving into how people work, observing they move, measuring how they recuperate from injury.
In the case of sports stars, this is approached with a view to helping them to achieve peak performance. Brian admits that the work has brought him into contact with some elite athletes, household names, but he is stonewall secure in protecting the identity of the these sport stars.
And he stresses that he is intent on assisting not just top class players of high profile games but also many people who are infirm and far from the spotlight of high level competition.
HE reveals that studies in which he participated included members of the IRFU’s professional squad before stressing that he also works with elderly people who have breathing difficulties or who are in danger of falling: ‘ The fundamentals are the same. Think of the data sets, not the celebrity.’
He muses ‘ I never wanted to be a doctor, though I was interested in medicine. Some aspects of medicine are passive while all of physiotherapy isactive.’
When the NovaUCD 2017 Innovation Award was being considered, the college authorities were impressed not only by academic excellence. They also appreciated that Professor Caulfield has turned research into commercial undertakings which have strengthened the college’s finances as well as its prestige.
He has collaborated with a range of multi-national and start-up companies, including BioMedical Research Ltd, Fujitsu Laboratories, GE, Intel, Novartis and Shimmer Research. However, Professor Caulfield insists that the vast majority of the research is undertaken in search of health benefits, and not for profit.
He admits with a hint of regret that he is not a practising physio any more: ‘If you have an injury then I am the last person you should talk to. The more ‘expert’ you become, the further away from the coal-face you end up.’
His practical expertise has been submerged in the pursuit of academic goals, his time taken up with administration, management and setting goals for others. He continues to lecture as a good professor should, conscious that the core business of a university is education.
He finds that one of the positive strengths of the university system is that it brings together many different disciplines as it also attempts to generate new knowledge. So computer scientists, bio-medical engineers and social scientists in other departments are his allies.
Together, through rigorous analysis of how the human body moves, they have put UCD to the fore in preventing injury as well as treating problem joints. The computer geeks are particularly important in assembling and making sense of large amounts of data to allow informed decision making – nothing in this field is based on a mere hunch.
The teamwork has yielded valuable breakthroughs in areas such as use of electrical stimulators to trigger impulses in nerves. One of the marketable uses of this technology is the Slendertone and similar devices used for body toning without the need for rigorous exercise.
Brian and his fellow researchers have generated welcome finance for the university through royalties.
He is a member of a growing fraternity as physiotherapy continues to grow.
To the long running programmes in UCD and Trinity College (with St James’s Hospital) have been added courses at Royal College of Surgeons and Limerick University.
Together, they produce around 250 new graduates each year and the professor is convinced that their services will be required by a greying nation.
He reasons that it will simply not be possible for the HSE to deal with the rising proportion of old people by offering expensive surgery and drugs – the bill will be too high.
‘ The health care system has to be radically changed,’ he insists. ‘A more pro-active approach is required, helping people to help themselves, not waiting for them to get ill.
‘Compare the cost of physiotherapy with the cost of drugs or surgery and physio will always come out on the good side.
‘Physiotherapy should be the future.’
IF YOU HAVE AN INJURY THEN I AM THE LAST PERSON YOU SHOULD TALK TO. THE MORE ‘EXPERT’ YOU BECOME, THE FURTHER AWAY FROM THE COALFACE YOU END UP